Honestly, I just did everything one after the other so it’s less of a hurdle and you can dedicate yourselg to figuring out and learning about that one particular step, both from a technical and social way. I didn’t even make a list or whatever, if I then feelt comfortable, I automatically went looking for the next big decision as if it was some kind of obsession (it was).
First I literally just switched browsers to Firefox forks with uBlock and got a VPN on my phone or PC. Got used to using them which was fast, also no social issues whatsoever obviously.
Then I started to get rid of most subscribtion services like actually downloading the four albums I hear instead of paying for Spotify and reduced what I post and deleted most of what I had posted on social media. This one was also easy, not much to it.
I switched to Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC, still Windows but feels more like a Linux distro. I still needed it for university with online exams and stuff, but definitely better than other alternatives. Honestly, this step was too little, I already wanted Linux, I just couldn’t lmao. Dual boot was out of the question, I can’t do two things at once, just a me thing I guess.
When I couldn’t be as private on my PC as I wanted to, I just sold my iPhone and got a Pixel with GrapheneOS on it. That was a learning curve but I basically dedicated two entire days on it and set everything up exactly like I wanted and got everything working exactly like it should.
Now we get to the first actual socially hard step the only thing I didn’t install on the Pixel was IG. From a privacy stand point I WANTED to get rid of it waaay sooner, but I was addicted, like actually not figuretively. I made a few attempts to keep it but use it less in the past to no success. I purposely didn’t install the app since this was a new phone and clean start anyway and forced myself to only use it in the browser which were extra steps to make it less of an automated habit thing and obviously a shitty experience in itself. After a week I noticed I wasn’t actually looking forward to using it anymore, made a close friends story with an explanation and a phone number and nuked my account. That step did go smoothly and the people that mattered started writing me more on Whatsapp. I mean better than IG, but still a thorn in my eye. I would have loved nuking that one too, but in Germany this is basically the only way to communicate. Will come back to that later, dw.
With the last online exam from the uni passed, I ditched Windows for Linux the same day. Fucking finally, I was looking forward to this one. I did have a few years of experience running Linux on stuff like modified 4.1/5.1 Mac Pros, but never actually as a daily-driver so not much getting used to, I felt relieved lmao.
A few months went by and I was itching for the next thing. I always wanted to nuke Whatsapp but again, in Germany that’s next to impossible. I did however get my wife to use Signal semi-reluctantly after she complained that I sometimes don’t see her Whatsapp messages on my Pixel. After another month I decided fuck it, wrote a wall of text like this one and not angrily or condecendingly but neutrally and carefully explained the risks of this app and big tech/government surveilance and that I will be deleting Whatsapp tomorrow. Socially that step was the hardest by far. Got some shit for it but ultimately if using this spyware is more important to you than contact with me then go fuck yourself.
So yeah again, I didn’t even mean for this to run like a list, but I seemingly made the unconcious decision to takle it one problem at a time, get used to it and only then move to the next step. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, so just view it as a process.
In the end I’m super fucking happy I did it. My head is much much much clearer and productivity through the roof. I opened a small business on the side at the start of the year and this week I began working on a Linux distro. I reverse-engineered the way SteamOS makes Arch semi-reliable and improved on that, combined with the optimized kernels and for your CPU-arcitecture compiled packages. Unthinkable if you only scroll on IG on your iPhone and then work on your Windows 11 PC.
I’d start by banning tablets, what the fuck is the point of “learning” IT stuff on a glorified 10 inch phone? Get them fucking laptops, even better with Linux, but I feel like even going BACK to Windows PCs would be an improvement at this point, sad.